So we had our first focus group this this week. Mixed results. Our intended audience of 12 school leavers turned into...sigh...just 5 people. Nevertheless, we persevered.

A quick presentation, then a fact-finding questionnaire, including a cheeky non-disclosure, because despite last week’s blog - we couldn’t risk some 17 year old bright spark stealing our idea. Right?

Then we opened up to the floor. Bit of Q&A and general discussion, whilst we leaned nonchalantly against a filing cabinet like the aspiring tech entrepreneurs we are. Even with the small cohort, it was a useful process and a good start to our focus group programme. In fact, using a bunch of school leavers was a good test case for fine-tuning our approach to users and how we explain STAMP from the ground-up.

Obviously, we’re not reading too much into the feedback until we’ve collated more data from groups representing the rest of our target demographic. But it's a start, and a positive one at that.

Generally though, it made us think about incentives. Have we been naive thinking that people will give up their lunch break or an hour of their evening for the opportunity to get their hands on a new app?

Budget is tight. We ain’t got much in the way of dollar to pay people to do this. So aside from ordering in some Domino’s to appease the hungry student types, we’re racking our brains for ideas on how to get people involved and excited. (Any ideas?)

Time is of the essence as well. We’re getting to the point where a functioning (fingers crossed) version of our app will be ready for the iPhone. Then we’ll want to get beta-testing. But preliminary, conceptual feedback is key and we want to recruit our testers from the focus group. Ahhhh. *Deep breaths*

Anyway, we’ll get back to work finding our focus groups. And you know, if you want, why not get involved. Get a bunch of mates together, get that pizza order in, a few beverages, drop us an email and we’ll come round for a personal presentation in the comfort of your own home/office/collaborative work space. Much appreciated.